Fixing The Fence

I put up this fence probably 40 or 50 years ago.  Our nighbor Larry had it built for me from cedar lumber.  The fence has been painted over and over again, and some pickets have been replaced when some of them deteriorated.  Well this winter, when the plows came by and pushed the heavy wet snow to the side of the road it broke loose two of the sections which fell down.  So I reattached the two sections and today started scraping and painting the whole fence.  It took several hours to do two sections.  I have two more to do.  You can see that the fence here definitely needs painting. But I am ultimately going to replace the fence.

So I started here on the right side of the photograph and I am just finishing up the second of two sections which I painted today. Do you like my little white seat I built?  I made it to hold binoculars when observing because I couldn't put them down in the grass.  But it is a perfect painting seat!   I have discovered that no one makes wooden fences anymore.  Everything is now plastic fencing which much of looks cheap.  SO...  I will buy the lumber and cut the pickets and attach them to the "stringers" that connect to the posts that hold the fence up.  It will be a long lasting job to do because of all the other work around here, like painting the west side of the house this season. But I will get this done.  Stay tuned!

I set my tools down and the paint and then realized it was an interesting photograph.  There is the scraper I used on all the wood, then the paintbrush to the right which I use to brush off all the scrapings, and then my paintbrush and can of paint, and my well used painting gloves.  A nice composition I thought!

And last but not least, a photograph of the finished painted part of the fence.  This is deceiving because it looks perfect, but many of the pickets are rotting in place and so are some of the stringers as well.  The third picket to the right of center is partially rotting away, if you look closely.  But at least the neighbor's won't dislike me because our property looks rundown.

 

A Rainbow!

It was just before suppertime that I went to the garage for some reason.  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a small part of this rainbow.  So as I started down the driveway toward the street where I hoped to be able to see more of the bow, our neighbor came racing across out front lawn, iPhone in hand, with the same idea!  So we both marveled at our great luck to see this much of a rainbow.  It was still sprinkling on us at the time, which was not unusual because it is the water drops that make the rainbow in the first place.

After I got the overall photograph, then I tried for a closeup which included this gnarled treetop just up the street.  I thought that added a special quality to the photograph, with that tree.

 

The Bus Stop

Back around Christmas time, someone added two colorful pieces of fabric, one on each side of the door from top to bottom showing two "nutcracker" soldiers as decoration for the holiday.  It was wonderful to see this small shelter brightened up.  It made me feel good every time I walked by it.  Well, it has now been completely painted and decorated with a flag and flowers and some bright colors.  If you want to see what this structure looked like for 50 years, click Here.  Quite a change.  It will be interesting to see if the decoration changes again in the future.

 

A Seestar Evening

Tonight's astronomy meeting was different.  It was supposed to be an observing night but it was partly cloudy so instead some members decided to make it a night where members who owned Seestar telescopes could gather and help each other learn to use these amazing instruments.  The three white things up on the tops of the tripods are called "Seestar all in one smart telescopes."  They are an amazing breakthrough in amateur astronomy.  As the light pollution gets worse and worse each year, these devices can photograph objects in the night sky that can't be seen by our eyes.  You set it on a tripod and then connect to it with an iPad or smartphone and you run it wirelessly.  You choose an object that you want to see, and it automatically goes to that object and starts taking photographs and each photo is added to the stack of other photos and suddenly the object appears on your phone or ipad!  It has changed amateur astronomy!

We had am amazing turnout tonight with perhaps 6 or 7 of these telescopes and a number of people who just came to observe.  This photo, above and the two below were actually taken in darkness!  I used my SONY a7 III camera with a "film speed" setting of 12,800!  The normal setting for the camera is 400.  And look what I can photograph with this incredibly sensitive sensor in the camera!

Here Don, one of our members is seated and running his Seestar which is up in the tripod behind him, from his iPad. One of the two members behind him also brought her Seestar and it is running off to one side while she is talking with another member.

Here Bill, on the left is discussing the operation of his Seestar with Mak, on the right, who is also running his telescops.  There were lots of questions and answers tonight as members more familiar with their telescopes were helping people who had only recently gotten their own scopes.  It was such a great evening with everyone helping each other learn this amazing new device.

 

The Sycamore Trees, a Different View

 

You are all aquainted with my photographs of the line of Sycamore trees along the sidewalk at the harbor's edge.  I have photographed them so many ways, but pretty much all in a line.  So on the way back from my walk the other day, I paused and looked up at this scene.  It is part of the line of trees, and instead of them all being in a line, there is one tree behind another behind another.  I had never taken notice of the trees seen this way, and it fascinated me.  So what we have here is a jumble of tree branches and you can't really tell where one tree begins and another ends.  I guess I liked the texture, and the design with branches going every which way.  A new way of seeing a familiar object.

 

Fixing The Adirondack Chairs

When my sister Joan moved from the family house to a condo, she had no room for two beautiful Adirondack chairs that she had for years.  So she gave them to us, and you have seen them in blog posts showing the back yard.  They sit up on the top of the little hill, and we sit there with coffee or cold drinks and relax under the shade of the trees and look out over our little world.  Well, the weather got to both of them, and we hadn't noticed until I sat in one and one of the slats in the seat broke!  So the water had caused rot in some parts of the seat.  So I got some new wood and made new slats, and replaced the front part of the piece of wood that the slats are screwed to.  Then I painted the chair and it looks good as new!

So, one chair done and one to go.  This is what the second chair looks like and there is actually less repair needed to this one.  In a few days this chair will look as good as new as well!  Easy peasy!  Thank you Joan for our wonderful chairs.  I am taking good care of them!

 

Yellow!

Well, I guess that the title for this photograph is appropriate!  On my latest walk I saw that Daffodils were  looming everywhere!  The problem is that the light has to be perfect to get a good photograph of a blooming blossom.  You would not believe how many photographs I took before getting this one,  And then the original was a photograph of two complete blossoms but the shot was boring, sort of.  So I thought of my good friend Dean who always told me "You need to get closer..." and so I cropped into the photograph and just included one blossom and a hint of the other for balance in the composition.  The detail inside the blossom is always fascinating.  And you do know to click to see more.